Chapter Iii) Have a Particular Interest in Relation to Our Subject. His

medium, Helene S......--very unlike others, who are satisfied with forecasts of the future, disclosures of unknown past events, counsel, prognosis, evocation, etc., without creating anything, in the proper sense--is the author of three or four novels, one of which, at least, is invented out of whole cloth--revelations in regard to the planet Mars, its countries, inhabitants, dwellings, etc. Although the descriptions and pictures of Helene S. are found on comparison to be borrowed from our terrestrial globe, and transposed and changed, as Flournoy has well shown, it is certain that in this "Martian novel," to say nothing of the others, there is a richness of invention that is rare among mediums: the creative imagination in its subliminal (unconscious) form encloses the other in its eclat. We know how much the cases of mediums teach us in regard to the unconscious life of the mind. Here we are permitted, as an exceptional case, to penetrate into the dark laboratory of romantic invention, and we can appreciate the importance of the labor that is going on there.

FOOTNOTES:

See Part I, Chapter III.

Mental Physiology, Book II, chapter 13.

This expression is put in quotation marks because in American and English usage "sensation" is defined in terms of consciousness, and such an expression as "unconscious sensation" is paradoxical, and would lead to futile discussion. (Tr.)

For the detailed criticism of unconscious cerebration, see Boris Sidis, The Psychology of Suggestion: A research into the subconscious nature of Man and Society, New York, Appletons, 1898, pp. 121-127. The author, who assumes the coexistence of two selves--one waking, the other subwaking, and who attributes to the latter all weakness and vice (according to him the unconscious is incapable of rising above mere association by contiguity; it is "stupid," "uncritical," "credulous," "brutal," etc.) would be greatly puzzled to explain its role in creative activity.